Tuesday Morning

There was a poem here, but it's gone. Instead, I'll tell you a little story.

This morning, my youngest (who has recently friended me on Facebook) posted this status update: "got pulled over by the police a half hour ago." Hmmm, interesting.

So I'm IMing with him on FB (because if I'm home alone, and they're visiting family, they're often calling or finding me online to chat about things), and he asks if I've seen his update, which I hadn't before that. Well, of course I respond with a "WHAT?!---what the heck happened?!"

Apparently, my dad took them to Baird's Creek so they could use their new snowskates and probably luge themselves down the hill on their hinders or whatever they'd brought with. My dad, being a 60 year-old smoker with emphysema---who doesn't do winter sports or winter weather, really---stayed in the car and watched the boys, probably chainsmoking and listening to a little light oldies.

Well, when the boys had enough, or when my dad had enough and yelled for them in his gravel voice (I imagine the latter came first), a neighbor was watching from across the hill. A neighbor who, apparently, didn't find my dad to be the ideal image of a "grandfather."

So, this good citizen called the police on my stalker, chainsmoking, probably a kidnapper dad, and no sooner than they pulled away from the hill, my dad was pulled over.

Many questions later, and I'm sure a mild heart attack, too, the kids and my dad were let go.

Now, I'm still trying to decide how I feel about all of this. On the one hand, I feel good knowing that someone in the world was looking out for my children (though, I'm going to say at this age and size, my kids would be hard to kidnap; they have my spunk and together they might just gouge someone's eyes out). On the other hand, I feel sort of sick to think that someone in the world saw my father as a potential pedophile.

I suppose you can never be too cautious nowadays. Scary.

*****